What Happened To The Other One
by BarbaraKaterina
Summary: or Life and Death of Sherrinford Holmes, and What He Did to Earn Mycroft's Animosity. /-/-/ Sherrinford's background story. Warning: morally ambiguous Mycroft - but then isn't he always? One-shot.


AN: Who hasn't wondered?

I don't own any of them – the ones that could be called OC in this story, I have no desire to own...

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When Mycroft's father married for the first time, he had been very young. The woman he picked, one Mary Gardner, was by all accounts a pretty, pleasant, cheerful girl, and it was no wonder Siger Holmes was charmed. It was rather less understandable that he decided to marry her straight away, especially seeing that he was only in his first years of the university. Nevertheless, decide he did.

His parents, though not precisely charmed by his choice of partner (daughter of a small town doctor, she wasn't exactly lower class, but not quite their level either), but didn't make much of a fuss and accepted her into their home. However, neither of them was warm by nature, and Mary Holmes felt stifled in the gloomy ancestral home of the Holmeses, with her beloved husband away at university (one clear condition his parents set for him was that he would finish his education, marriage or not – after all, they could provide for his wife in every way, couldn't they?). When her son was born, Mary Holmes made him the focal point of her life, and for short while, all was bright in her world again, especially after her husband graduated and returned home full-time. If she was aware that Siger would have liked to stay at the university for postgraduate studies, she never considered it for long. He had family, after all.

But Sherrinford grew older, and the Holmes family started to make demands concerning his education and discipline. Here, she found, her views and those of her husband's family were impossible to reconcile. She took to shielding him from her parents-in-law, and her arguments with her husband grew more violent every day. She saw him as helplessly under the sway of his family, never considering that his opinions might actually be in accord with those of senior Holmeses. Her Sherrinford was a precious boy to be coddled, not a prisoner to be disciplined, and surely at least her husband must see it, if his cold parents didn't?

Siger obstinately refused to see the light, and this conflict widened the chasm between husband and wife, chasm that first appeared after Siger left Mary alone in the Holmes house to go back to his second year of university studies. They gradually grew estranged, Sherrinford becoming the only interest in Mary's life.

However, the Holmeses were unwilling to give up on their heir, and so though he was coddled and shielded by his mother till the age of five, after that, his paternal family took care of paying him the best teachers, who all were too strict for Mary's liking. She now had entire half-days to herself, without the company of her beloved son who was tortured by those monsters, as she liked to think, and she vented her sorrow by going for trips to town, to do some shopping and be flirted at, because she was still very beautiful – after all, she was only twenty-four – and to get back some of that cheerful life she lost after she got married. And if she sometimes flirted back, well, who can blame her, when her wedding bed had been cold for a few years already?

When she returned home, she was still the same devoted mother and spent every minute there with her son, but she barely communicated with anyone else and her in-laws were constantly looking at her in disapproval, especially when they saw her leave for the city in one of the new dresses she kept buying – not because of the money, they never begrudged her that, but the current fashion was becoming more and more outrageous, the skirts shorter and shorter. Her trips to town were becoming longer and more frequent, too, and sometimes she left for London in the evenings again, after Sherrinford had been sent to bed.

Siger, in the meantime, was spending more and more time at Oxford, donating large sums of money to various departments and supporting his old school in any way possible, regretful of his wasted chance at education.

The relationships in the Holmes household, already very frosty, came to absolute zero once Sherrinford left for Eton. Mary immediately demanded, and was granted without much argument, a flat in London, where she effectively moved, only coming back for Christmas to spend time with her son. The same son, she once took with her to London for Easter – unbeknownst to the rest of the family, who thought he was staying at school – and gave him a glimpse of her new life. The boy was mostly confused, having grown up in the country, but this world his mother showed him was bright and cheerful and overly, he liked it. His mother promised him to take him back next Easter.

But then, of course, she died in a car crash shortly after Christmas in Sherrinford's second year at Eton. Driving while under the influence of drugs, though the family kept that quiet, naturally.

Sherrinford blamed his remaining family, because he had no one else to blame and because his mother taught him that especially his grandparents were cold and evil.

He was willing to reserve judgement in case of his father, who had after all always been relatively kind to him (though he could never compare to Mummy), but that changed when, a year after the death of his mother, his father announced his engagement to a doctor of mathematics who had been his faithful friend for years.

Sherrinford spent most of the summer after that with his friends, as he did every consequent summer, and stopped coming home for Christmas. Nevertheless, he couldn't entirely escape the knowledge that his father was married again – a strange woman was now where his mother was supposed to be – and that he had a half-brother. He knew that his mother had always wanted another child, but his father had refused adamantly – yet here he was, willingly producing more offspring with this new woman. Sherrinford hated her, and he hated the baby, who should have been his little brother or sister, but wasn't, really wasn't, because it was _hers_, even more.

He finished Eton and was told that if he wanted to have a decent allowance, he would graduate from a decent university. So he chose one and did just enough not to get expelled, interested mainly in the social life, associating with a crowd his mother would have liked. After he was done with that, he moved to London to his mother's old flat and continued his lifestyle of sloth.

Two years later, his paternal grandfather died, and under the threat of his allowance being cut, he agreed to come to the funeral and behave appropriately. He was aware that his father had had another child, but it wasn't present, and so he only saw his hated half-brother, Mycroft.

The obnoxious child – nine at the moment – was sat next to him at the reception, and looking at him once with those unnerving eyes (he had had them already when Sherrinford last saw him, when the brat had been three), he asked quietly: "What did they threaten you with to make you attend? What kind of hold do they have over you?"

Sherrinford's hatred rose tenfold.

Nevertheless, he didn't see any member of his family for twelve years after that. Until the next funeral, that is, after his grandmother died.

There, he finally met the other brat, Sherlock. He saw that woman, his father's second wife, absolutely dote on the little spawn. He was seated next to both of his half-brothers, and the teenager gave him a once-over very similar to his brother's, but his reaction was a little different: "I don't see why they bother inviting you when you clearly hate everyone present – though Mycroft and Mummy most of all, interesting, that – and don't want to be here."

"Please, forgive my brother," Mycroft stepped in in his smooth political voice, "he is distraught by his grandmother'd death."

"I'm not distraught and you know it," Sherlock stated clearly.

Sherrinford was amused. "I like you," he told Sherlock, and while t was a lie, he did appreciate that the brat irritated Mycroft. That was always a good deed. "We should spend some quality time together, as brothers. You should learn that you have a siblinh who is more fun, and more interesting, than Mycroft."

"Stay away from him," Mycroft said coldly, but immediately, Sherlock protested. "I can choose who I spend time with, you know! You aren't my mother."

Sherrinford smiled as an idea grew in his head. "Don't you just find it boring? Everything, I mean?" He asked, ignoring the sibling quarrel.

Sherlock did.

"I can't do much at the moment," Sherrinford explained, "but trust me, I will figure something out and let you know."

Mycroft warned Sherrinford to stay away once more, in private.

"Or what?" The older man asked.

"Or I will destroy you."

"Oh please."

"I might not be powerful enough to hurt you now," Mycroft replied calmly, "but I will one day. I know that you know I have it in me, and trust me, I will get there, if only to fulfil my threat to you. If you hurt Sherlock, you will be very sorry."

Sherrinford only scoffed, and on Easter, he took Sherlock to London. They stayed in his flat and visited his crowd, the older brother being somewhat more open towards his younger sibling than his mother had been to him all those years ago when she took him on a similar trip. But then, he had been younger, albeit by only two years.

During that school break, Sherlock became familiar with alcohol, cigarettes, and, most importantly, cocaine, which paved the way to heroin later. It was one of the most life-changing events of his life.

Of course, most of this Mycroft only knew from other people's memories or speculation. He was, however, confident that it was a very accurate picture. He put it together very carefully, because it was always good to know as much as possible about a man you were going to destroy.

Sherrinford Holmes was popular and known in the London crowd, famous for always keeping it together, even though he had been using cocaine for years. His brother the government official was known to be a tad miffed at his brother's irreverent lifestyle, thinking that he put a stain on the family name, but apart from that, he was a favourite of almost everyone who knew him. However, when he was forty-one years old, something happened. He switched from cocaine to heroin, and turned into a rather heavy user, and then a desperate addict. At the same time, there was a mysterious problem with his allowance – one he was in no state to deal with – and so he was suddenly left without money. Living on the streets, he tried working as a prostitute to make money for heroin, but he was too old to really earn enough. His life turned into one long hell of withdrawal, and he managed to only get hands on just enough drug to make the suffering infinite. This went on for several years, Sherrinford slipping deeper and deeper into madness. Sometimes, he was heard cursing his brother, which was very strange, because, as concerned Mycroft told everyone who asked, he had tried to help his beloved elder brother – they were never truly close, true, there was too big an age difference between him and both of his brothers to be close to either of them, but Sherrinford was still family, and the Holmes heir to boot, so Mycroft had done what he could, naturally, but – a sad silence, a sigh – some people just didn't want to be saved, and then there was no helping them. Sherrinford contracted several illnesses, too, which made his suffering even worse, but in the end, he didn't die of them. He died as a victim of an uncommonly brutal attack – apparently, the people in question were sadists, so there was torture involved before death, and body parts have been cut off. The perpetrators were never caught. Drug-related violence, probably.

It was quite a family tragedy, and if people at work were giving Mycroft a slightly wider berth after it happened, perhaps it was because of that. But then again, it as a little strange that it was only the ones who were higher in the hierarchy of secret services who did that, and also, that they were much swifter in dealing with his requests afterwards too. But perhaps they just wanted to ease his grief in any way they could.

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AN: For anyone interested in my logic: Mycroft's and Sherlock's dynamics clearly says that they were the only two brothers in the picture, yet we know there was another one. So a much older one, who was already out of the picture by the time the brothers were born (if he had been much younger instead, Mycroft would have likely been protective of him too). Also, Mycroft would never do anything to upset Mummy, so clearly not her son. So, a much older half-brother...the rest just followed.


End file.
